Suit says acquitted man jailed for hours

Friday

Dec 7, 2012 at 12:01 AMDec 7, 2012 at 10:30 AM

A Lewis Center man says Franklin County deputies held him against his will for hours after a jury acquitted him earlier this year of manslaughter, taking his DNA to submit to a state database although felony charges were no longer pending against him.

Theodore Decker, The Columbus Dispatch

A Lewis Center man says Franklin County deputies held him against his will for hours after a jury acquitted him earlier this year of manslaughter, taking his DNA to submit to a state database although felony charges were no longer pending against him.

Keith Crabbs’ constitutional rights were violated when jail staff members detained him until he gave up a DNA sample, his attorney says in the civil lawsuit filed yesterday in U.S. District Court in Columbus.

The suit names Franklin County Sheriff Zach Scott, a string of Scott’s employees, Attorney General Mike DeWine and Tom Stickrath, superintendent of the state’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation. The attorney general’s office maintains the state’s database of DNA profiles.

“There can be little doubt that the only reason the sheriff demanded Keith Crabbs’ DNA was to try to find some crime in which Mr. Crabbs was implicated,” attorney Michael Garth Moore said. “The anger of the jailers over the acquittal was obvious, and this was clearly one desperate effort to hold him in custody.”

A Franklin County Common Pleas jury found Crabbs not guilty of manslaughter on March 15 in the 2010 death of Brian Tobin, 39.

Crabbs, 47, admitted that he shot Tobin during a chance encounter on the Hilltop on April 24, 2010, but insisted he acted in self-defense. The men had a falling-out over business dealings years earlier, but they had little contact until the night of the shooting. Both had guns, although Crabbs was not injured.

Moore said Crabbs was taken back to jail following the jury verdict and forced to change into a prison jumpsuit. Moore, who did not represent Crabbs at trial, said his client was held for hours, kept from his lawyer, and released only after allowing deputies to swab his mouth for DNA.

State law permits law-enforcement agencies to take DNA from anyone charged with a felony, but Moore said the seizure of his client’s DNA came after the acquittal.

“As soon as that man is acquitted, that man is an innocent man,” Moore said. “You must treat him as an innocent man, and a free man. He was restored to all of his full rights as a citizen.”

Sheriff Scott was in training yesterday and unavailable for comment. Chief Deputy Mark Barrett, who returned a call in Scott’s absence, said he could not talk about the suit. Speaking generally, he said that releasing any inmate from custody can take time.

“There’s an out-processing period that someone has to go through,” he said. He declined further comment.

DeWine had no comment on the case, but noted that his office and BCI essentially serve as a repository for DNA profiles based on samples that are submitted by law-enforcement agencies.

tdecker@dispatch.com

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